"We hold many fears inside us from which we cannot free ourselves."
Big-wave surfer “groomed, drugged and sexually abused by a family friend” as a tween finds solace in riding fifty-foot waves, “Do whatever you like to me. I surrender. Maybe I will die.”
“Surfing saved me from the dark side of the night."
The Portuguese big-wave surfer Joana Andrade, a tiny five-two in Havs, but relentless hunter and slayer of Nazaré rhinos, is the star of a documentary set for cinema release called Big vs Small.
It’s a wild story in a sport that has its fair share of ’em.
Andrade was the first woman to tow Naz’s lethal jack-in-the-box peaks, pre-Maya Gabeira etc, and came to surfing after being drugged, groomed and sexually abused by a family pal when she was twelve.
“Surfing saved me from the dark side of the night,” she says. “We hold many fears inside us from which we cannot free ourselves.”
The film detours into Andrade’s breath-holding training with Finnish freediver Johanna Nordblad.
You might’ve already seen Nordblad in the Netflix documentary “Hold Your Breath, The Ice Dive”where she tries to hit a world record for distance travelled under the ice-pack with one breath.
Two epic women sucking air and disappearing into the inky black, under a ceiling of ice.
A helluva long way from the Ments or the Pacific splendour of Tahiti.
“Do whatever you like to me,” Andrade say. “I surrender. Maybe I will die.”
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John John and pal on an earlier voyage to the Line Islands, a 2500 mile warm-up to his Hawaii-Fiji crossing.
Hawaiian surf great John John Florence gives glimpse into wild trans-Pacific crossing in rare interview, “Lots of wind, lots of wave action…scary moments… Why do I put myself through this stress? I’m selling the boat…we’re done!”
“My relationship with the boat is love, hate. Sometimes it's the most amazing thing ever. When something breaks, it's the worst."
The just-turned thirty-year-old twice world champion John John Florence has given a rare long-form interview with Outside magazine concerning his knee injury that forced him to abdicate from the back end of the tour and his subsequent three-thousand mile open-ocean crossing from Hawaii to Fiji.
The interviewer is Paddy O’Connell and since I read the transcript and didn’t listen to the audio version I figured it was a misspelling and they’d only been granted the interview on the proviso a Florence Marine X employee, preferably its Chicago born honey blond president notable for a scrotum that has to be physically bundled into his underwear, would handle the questions.
It ain’t, and it gets even more confusing when an Outside editor called Michael jumps in, asking O’Connell questions before shifting back to John John.
Still, there are moments.
Highlights.
On surfing with a knee injury and with precious hinge in brace:
“I almost like those situations because it turns it into like a challenge in itself. Like, okay, I have to slow down and I have to think about this a little more and I have to surf the best I can with what I have. It almost simplifies it in a way, weirdly enough… It simplifies it, it simplifies the whole mindset around competing. Because when you have, when, when everything’s good, you try to find all the negatives and you’re like, oh, I’m not ready. My board’s not ready. This doesn’t feel right. And then when something like that happens, everything goes out the window and you’re just like, I just have to surf a good wave when it comes in.”
On a three-day hike from the North Shore to Honolulu,
“We were just like, okay, we’re gonna do this. So we bought all this backpacking gear and then just picked the absolute worst weather window. Downpouring sideways rain, as miserable as it gets. Knee deep mud for three days. Can’t see where you’re walking in the dark. Just falling over every five feet and just so, so painful. But just kind of loving it, I guess. At the end of it, you’re just like, oh my gosh. That was, that was actually pretty fun.”
On competing v freesurfing,
“I do enjoy the competing and I can really kind of get my mind there and really get into it. Kind of adjust my surfing towards it. I feel like, you kind of fall back into the same, habits, routines, patterns, things like that. I absolutely love the purity of like, kind of what we call free surfing. I think there’s something to free surfing that allows a little more expression. You can kind of let loose a little more and draw a little bit different lines rather than getting sucked into the same thing. You have so much time to kind of explore and draw lines in different ways.”
Injury at Pipe,
“I broke my ankle. Then I broke my back. Then I did pretty bad grade three high ankle sprains on both ankles, kind of back to back years in a row. Then did MCL tears on both knees back to back. Then did ACL tears on both knees back to back years with surgeries, with both ACLS. So that was ACL surgery two years in a row. Not fun. Don’t do it. And then again, MCLs on my left knee twice since the ACLS. And I think that’s it so far.
And his trans-Pacific crossing on his forty-eight foot catamaran with his wife and two pals,
“My relationship with the boat is definitely a love, hate relationship. Sometimes I’m like, this is the most amazing thing ever. Look at it. We’re sailing at 15 knots and it’s beautiful and everything feels great. And then the next moment something breaks and I’m like, this is the worst. I hate this. I don’t know why we’re doing this. Why do I put myself through this stress? I’m selling the boat. When we get to Fiji, I’m selling the boat, we’re done.”
San Diego area surfers desperate for glimpse of Brad Pitt despondent as famous first daughter Emily Ratajkowski spotted making out with New York disc jockey!
Days ago it was reported, here, that Emily Ratajkowski had floated a sort of denial that she was involved with Brad Pitt. The model/actress and world’s sexiest man had been linked since her split with not-very-attractive husband though never spotted together. Ratajkowski, anyhow, told the media, “I’m newly single for basically the first time in my life ever, and I just feel like I’m kind of enjoying the freedom of not being super worried about how I’m being perceived.”
Surfers in her hometown of Encinitas, California, immediately perceived thrown smoke, though, exactly like telling someone George’s is pumping when D Street actually is, what with the “newly single” and “kind of enjoying the freedom” and “Brad Spotting” quickly replaced wearing hats as the favorite pastime of locals.
Could he be ordering pizza from East Coast?
Might he be at the Taco Stand drinking a Modelo?
Sitting in Swami’s parking lot watching an older man over-wax his board?
Alas, hearts broke late last night when our famous first daughter was witnessed making out with a disc jockey and not on the Pacific Coast Highway but rather New York.
Per Page Six:
Emily Ratajkowski was spotted packing on the PDA with Orazio Rispo in New York City last Friday night, weeks after sparking romance rumors with Hollywood hunk Brad Pitt.
The model, 31, and the DJ, 35, were photographed during a date night in the Big Apple – and the two certainly weren’t shy about getting intimate in front of the cameras.
Photos show the flirty pair holding each other close before locking lips on the sidewalk near a street lined with cars.
Following the steamy makeout session, Rispo passed a helmet over to Ratajkowski, who hopped on his motorcycle before they zoomed off together. The model held her new beau close as he drove her to their next destination.
Even if Emrata did bring Rispo home with her, I’m near certain no one would care to see him. That time I saw her in Seaside Market with her then-husband did not impress me at all.
Again, he was real squishy faced.
Not perfect like Pitt.
Sad.
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Slater (pictured) alone in his bathtub.
In vicious slap upside head of Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch, Mad Max-inspired Australian Surf Lakes to be built deep in the heart of Texas!
It seems like forever since the world’s greatest surfer Kelly Slater stole poor little Adriano de Souza’s thunder and revealed the future of surfing. His perfect manmade barrel, peeling and reeling on demand, man in tower pushing button and materializing. Our collective jaws dropped, knowing that it would be only a matter of time until the prototype, in Lemoore, would be reproduced in many better places like Palm Springs, Miami, Oklahoma City, etc.
Except zero have been built.
Oh, the dream ain’t dead, tanks are popping up here and there but no not one utilizing Slater’s patented plow.
And now, in a vicious slap upside the head, it has been announced that Mark Occhilupo’s Surf Lake is set be built in Texas.
Surf Lakes is coming to Austin, Texas. Staying true to the old saying ‘everything is bigger in Texas’; this freshly inked project is set to be the biggest surf park development on the planet.
With a 12-acre Surf Lake at its centre, surrounded by sandy beach, boardwalks, restaurants, hotels, retail shopping and residency, the 400 acre ‘Pura Vida’ high adventure community will be located just south of Austin’s international airport, 20 minutes from downtown, and 15 minutes from the new $10 billion Tesla Gigafactory, (which will employ 20,000 people).
With the land secured, along with zoning, water, and wastewater entitlements, ground-breaking could be as early as mid-2023. With a Capex of roughly $1.3 billion, Pura Vida is on track to be the largest integrated wave pool development in the world.
The land was purchased by local developers seeking to position a Surf Lake as the centrepiece of their high adventure, mixed-use retail and residential community. In addition to the Surf Lakes centrepiece, other high adventure additions will soon be announced for the Pura Vida community.
Could there be any better fit for a Surf Ranch than Texas?
Imagine the gorgeous cosplay available to World Surf League CEO Erik Logan. Where do you think “cowboy” ranks on the list of his childhood dreams?
More as the story develops.
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Photo: DJ Struntz.
After torturing self for new television program, Australian hunk Chris Hemsworth declares surfing very cold water to be worse than starving, drowning!
"Halfway through, my brain felt like it was being stabbed by a thousand knives."
You, of course, know Chris Hemsworth from his many roles playing variations of Thor. You also must know that he is an avid surfer. Oh, not avid in the modern Jonah Hill iteration but actually legitimate. A surfer’s surfer. The Australian hunk regularly folds our favorite pastime into his life and, thus, is aware of both the hassles and joys. The light pains and small euphorias.
Well, you can then imagine my surprise when Hemsworth declared surfing very cold water to be the worst torture on earth. As part of a new docuseries titled Limitless in which our hero “explores the potential of the human body through a gauntlet of grueling ordeals,” the real life superhero took part in simulated drowning exercises, the sort Navy SEALs do, starved himself for days, pulled a truck with his own bulging muscles. And yet, according to the Men’s Journal:
Hemsworth said the most difficult episode to film involved surfing and swimming in 37-degree water in the Norwegian Arctic.
“Halfway through, my brain felt like it was being stabbed by a thousand knives,” he said.
The actor is no stranger to physical challenges, including chilly water — his personal trainer and longtime friend Luke Zocchi previously told Insider that Hemsworth swears by ice baths to help with muscle aches.
Even with the ice bath practice and being a surfer’s surfing, chilly paddling is the worst thing on earth. Comforting to know, I suppose, that those of us who have surfed in the cold are amongst the toughest people on earth.
Go tell your significant other that you and Thor are basically the same, today.
